


Unwound

by sciencefictioness



Category: Sekiro: Shadows Die Twice (Video Game)
Genre: Blood and Gore, Canon-Typical Violence, M/M, Pining, Shibari
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-10-30
Updated: 2019-10-30
Packaged: 2021-01-13 05:42:21
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,565
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21239096
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/sciencefictioness/pseuds/sciencefictioness
Summary: Genichiro has never seen anyone move the way Wolf does.  It’s fluid. Graceful.Lithe.He’s seen it dozens of times and it’s still hard to look away.  Wolf arcs through the air and alights on a tree branch, taking a messy swig from his gourd.  The water drips down his chin. He wipes at it with his knuckles, searching out his next target as he tucks the gourd away again.There’s a sharp pain in Genichiro’s side.  One of the Ministry’s swordsmen is there with his blade pulled back, Genichiro’s blood glinting on the steel, ready to strike again.  The wound is an annoyance more than anything else. Genichiro glares and lifts his sword, but doesn’t have the chance to swing.Before he can move a kunai sinks into the swordsman’s throat.  His eyes go wide and he paws at the metal in his throat, pulling it free in a spray of red; he drops to his knees and falls over, clutching at the wound as he gurgles then goes still.Wolf isn’t smiling when Genichiro looks up at him in the trees but it’s a close thing; the ghost of a smirk.  Genichiro is always watching him.Wolf always catches him staring.





	Unwound

**Author's Note:**

  * For [CorvidFightClub](https://archiveofourown.org/users/CorvidFightClub/gifts).

It’s what he wanted. What he’d been asking for, and chasing after. What he needs if he’s going to have any hope of saving Ashina.

Genichiro should have known that getting what he wants wouldn’t work out the way he planned.

It never has. 

It never will.

Still, he keeps reaching.

Wolf is fighting at his side— finally,  _ finally—  _ and it’s everything Genichiro thought it would be and more. The Ministry troops drop like flies before him and the rest of his men close the distance between them, Wolf slipping through their ranks unnoticed as he picks off as many as he can before they realize he’s there. This is the easy part; Genichiro rains down arrows, and Wolf slits throats. The Ministry is thrown into chaos before he even has to draw his sword.

Then Wolf is out in the open with Kusabimaru in hand, and things get harder. Not for Wolf.

For Genichiro.

Wolf is on his left, then his right. Then he’s nowhere to be seen, vanishing in a cloud of red smoke before reappearing somewhere else entirely. He’s soaring up onto a rooftop, then leaping down to bury a blade in someone’s chest. Wolf is everywhere at once and Genichiro is dizzy trying to keep track of him. 

There’s no reason he needs to trail after Wolf with his eyes. Kuro has ordered him to stand with Genichiro and Wolf follows Kuro’s commands to the ends of the earth and beyond. Follows them to his death without flinching.

Into the afterlife, then back again. 

Genichiro doesn’t need to search out Wolf in the fray again and again to be sure he’s there.

He just can’t seem to stop.

It isn’t the first battle they’ve fought together and it won’t be the last. Genichiro thought it would get easier with time, with practice. That he’d stop seeking Wolf out as swords clashed all around them, eyes roving wildly around the battlefield. It hasn’t gotten easier.

It has gotten harder. Genichiro has never seen anyone move the way Wolf does. It’s fluid. Graceful.

Lithe.

Something the Ministry’s shadows try and fail to emulate. Watching Wolf fight is like watching someone dancing.

He’s seen it dozens of times and it’s still hard to look away. Wolf arcs through the air and alights on a tree branch, taking a messy swig from his gourd. The water drips down his chin. He wipes at it with his knuckles, searching out his next target as he tucks the gourd away again.

There’s a sharp pain in Genichiro’s side. One of the Ministry’s swordsmen is there with his blade pulled back, Genichiro’s blood glinting on the steel, ready to strike again. The wound is an annoyance more than anything else. Genichiro glares and lifts his sword, but doesn’t have the chance to swing.

Before he can move a kunai sinks into the swordsman’s throat. His eyes go wide and he paws at the metal in his throat, pulling it free in a spray of red; he drops to his knees and falls over, clutching at the wound as he gurgles then goes still.

Wolf isn’t smiling when Genichiro looks up at him in the trees but it’s a close thing; the ghost of a smirk. Genichiro is always watching him.

Wolf always catches him staring.

Genichiro’s glare is pointed at Wolf now, brows drawn together and mouth a tight line. He picks up the kunai at his feet, throwing it at Wolf with a sullen sort of viciousness. For anyone but a shinobi, it would be a fatal blow.

Wolf snatches it out of the air with his prosthetic without looking away from Genichiro. His mouth twitches as he tucks it into his satchel, then he’s gone again, flitting across the ground with his blade in hand.

Genichiro watches.

He can’t seem to stop.

-

He finds Wolf when they get back to the castle. He’s in Kuro’s chambers giving the young lord a report of everything that happened while they were away; enemy movements, losses they’ve suffered, what Wolf thinks they will do next.

_ Is it still strange fighting alongside Lord Genichiro? _

_ _ There’s a beat of silence, and then— 

_ Strange isn’t the word I’d use. _

Kuro laughs brightly as though Wolf has told some joke that Genichiro missed, then tells him to get cleaned up. Wolf strides from the room, pausing only for an instant when he catches sight of Genichiro waiting in the hall.

“Was there something you needed Lord Genichiro,” he asks without stopping, walking past Genichiro towards his quarters.

As though Genichiro is someone to be thoughtlessly dismissed. It rankles, mostly because no one else would dare. Only Wolf is brazen enough.

Only Wolf knows what it feels like to have Genichiro helpless on the end of his sword. Genichiro trails after him, frustration roiling in his chest. He doesn’t know what he needs; Wolf hasn’t done anything wrong, and yet Genichiro wants to shake him. Wants to get his hands on him.

Wants to pin him down. Hold him still.

“You’re a distraction in the field,” Genichiro says before he can stop himself, already regretting the words. “How are the men supposed to focus when you can’t stay on the ground and fight beside them?”

Wolf is far enough ahead of Genichiro that he can’t see his face, but he can hear Wolf’s amusement all the same.

“Is it the men who are distracted, or is it you?”

Genichiro has Wolf pinned against the wall in an instant, right forearm laid across his collar bones, fingers wrapped around the wrist of his weapon hand. Something in Wolf’s irises flares, and focuses. He’s so much smaller than Genichiro.

So much stronger. Wolf has blood on his jaw and fire in his eyes and scars Genichiro longs to feel under his fingertips. For a moment he forgets what he’s going to say.

For a moment, Genichiro thinks about kissing him.

“You overstep, shinobi,” he says instead, leaning closer until he can feel Wolf’s breath on his face. That almost-smile is back again, like Genichiro has done something endearing.

“Are you going to remedy that, Lord Genichiro? Put me in my place?”

It’s lilted and suggestive and Genichiro has  _ never  _ heard Wolf’s voice like that— rough with want. Low, and teasing. Genichiro is warm all over. It’s hard to breathe, and he doesn’t know how to make his mouth work.

He’s never said a word. Will never speak again.

Wolf  _ does  _ smile then, eyes glittering as the corner of his mouth quirks up.

“Not today, then?”

He slips out of Genichiro’s hold like it’s nothing, because it  _ is  _ nothing to him— Wolf was only pinned against the wall because he allowed himself to be. 

Because he allowed Genichiro to put him there. He disappears down the hall without a backward glance, leaving Genichiro alone with chest heaving and his eyes wide. Genichiro covers his mouth with his palm, dragging it down his face. Then he lets it drop, hands closed into fists as he grinds his teeth.

Nothing ever works out the way Genichiro plans.

Still, he keeps reaching.

-

Genichiro doesn’t notice the weapon soaring through the air. 

It isn’t Wolf’s fault, this time. 

The Ministry has taken to releasing more of their dogs to try and get an edge on the Ashina now that their offensive is dragging. It works, in that it’s a distraction that must be dealt with before Genichiro and his men can press forward, and it gives the Ministry more time to regroup.

The axe spins through the air, blood on the steel glittering silver and crimson. It isn’t a weapon he normally associates with the Ministry. 

It isn’t something he expects to be ducking on the battlefield. Genichiro notices it too late— there isn’t time to breathe. Isn’t time to react. It is simply there, and in the next instant it will be buried in his face, and Genichiro can do nothing but take it and hope the sediment in him is strong enough to bring him back again. Dying is agony, however it comes.

His heart stops and his vision goes black and Genichiro can’t feel Ashina, anymore. His lands are far away on a distant shore, and dragging himself back there is harder every time.

Except Genichiro doesn’t die, right then.

There’s the barest sting of metal on his cheek and then he’s tackled to the ground in a jumble of limbs.

Wolf is wild-eyed atop him, breathing hard and looking at Genichiro with blatant concern on his face. It is an expression reserved for Kuro, and no one else; shameless worry.

Unabashed devotion. 

Wolf is warm and strong and Genichiro can’t help the way his hands find Wolf’s waist. The way his fingers dig in hard. The way he leans forward just a little, lips parted and eyes wide. Wolf reaches up to run his fingertips over the cut on Genichiro’s cheek; it’s nothing serious, thanks to Wolf. Just a scratch, but Wolf doesn’t seem pleased.

“Watch yourself,” Wolf says, an accusation unspoken in the words. 

He rolls to his feet before Genichiro can respond, picking up the fallen axe and flinging it back at the soldier who threw it. It sinks into his face. Splits it in half, and it’s effortless— everything Wolf does in a fight looks easy.

Genichiro has never wanted anyone more.

-

Genichiro doesn’t know where the Ministry got the beast, or how they managed to get it so deep into Ashina without destroying half their own troops in the process. He remembers how troublesome their own had been, before Wolf cut it down— trampling unwary soldiers, knocking down towers, setting fires when its horns had been wrapped in straw and set ablaze. This bull isn’t quite as large, but what it lacks in size it makes up for in speed. 

He’d ordered his troops to retreat before they got picked off one by one until there were none of them left. It is only Genichiro and Wolf now, caught in some narrow pathways in the outskirts. They could run but the bull would follow after them, razing even more of Ashina to the ground. 

They could run but Genichiro doesn’t know how, and Wolf has long since forgotten what it is like to fear death. To respect it. Respect is for his master’s will, and nothing else.

They are both fools. They can only fight.

Genichiro gets knocked down once, twice, and then Wolf takes it upon himself to draw the bull’s attention. He’s startlingly fast, quick to run up behind the animal and get in a few strikes before backing away again. All Genichiro is good for is getting in the way it seems, so he puts some distance between himself and the chaos of Wolf and the bull and draws his bow. Firing on it from a distance feels cowardly when Wolf is in the midst of things, but every arrow that hits home makes the animal flinch. Makes him slower as his blood drains out bit by bit. The beast is flagging. 

That’s what Genichiro thinks before it rears back all of a sudden, driving a flaming horn into Wolf’s stomach and flinging him into the air.

Genichiro doesn’t mean to move. Doesn’t mean to take off his armor, littering the ground behind him with his hand guards and helmet and horo. 

Doesn’t mean to draw his sword and run into the fray, lightning erupting in the sky and surrounding him in stuttering shades of gold. Wolf lays in the dirt, the bull nosing roughly at him, tossing his limp body back and forth like a rag doll. There’s a ringing in his ears and it’s all he can hear, but Genichiro must be screaming. His throat hurts.

The bull lifts his head and turns towards him at the noise, Wolf forgotten as he runs at Genichiro instead. It’s just what he wants. Genichiro needs some space between them if he wants to strike the animal without hitting Wolf, too. 

The lightning comes to his call like a wild animal that doesn’t quite understand what it is to be domesticated. Too much, too fast, too strong. It runs through Genichiro’s veins and spreads through his skin. It burns just as badly as the first time he’d summoned it, even all these years later.

Wielded but untamed.

It makes him think of Wolf.

It spills down his blade, and Genichiro swings wildly at the bull, watching it twitch in place as the current rolls through its body. Where Wolf lays there is a haze of red, the scent of flowers on the wind. Genichiro can’t pay him any mind even though it’s always been something fascinating to watch— Wolf surging into himself again, body coming to life in a rush.

It doesn’t matter how many times he dies. Doesn’t matter that Genichiro knows he will come back.

Something in him grieves without fail. Something in him mourns.

Something in him is convinced Wolf is gone forever and he never even  _ tasted him. _

Genichiro lashes out at the bull again and again, dodging as best he can when it swings its horns, rolling out of the way as flames lick at his exposed arms. He presses forward when he shouldn’t, reckless like he always is when Wolf falls in a fight. 

He’s beginning to wonder who will collapse first— him, or the bull— when there’s a flash of movement over the bull’s head.

Wolf arcs through the air with his sword drawn, landing on the back of the bull’s neck and burying his blade deep. The bull jerks all over then drops like a stone. Genichiro is close enough that he has to stumble backwards to keep from being crushed, but he still gets hit with a spray of hot blood as Wolf lands in a crouch beside him. They’re both covered in gore and gasping for breath. Sweating. Exhausted.

Wolf grabs Genichiro’s weapon hand— Genichiro doesn’t flinch from it, doesn’t pull away. He’s looking at the burns on Genichiro’s forearm. They aren’t severe, but they’ll take some time to heal, even with the help of the sediment. It’s nothing at all compared to what Wolf went through.

Dying on him again. He’s lost track of how many times it’s happened.

Genichiro would rather do it himself than see Wolf still and lifeless on the ground. He always drops his sword, and that’s worse than all the rest of it.

“What was it you said to me? ‘Watch yourself’?”

Genichiro doesn’t mean to say it but it falls from his lips before he can stop himself. Wolf is still careless with his life; right now it means less than nothing, but if he manages to live through severance the habit will cost him everything. Throwing himself foolishly into a fight. Winning at any cost. Genichiro will lose him.

It’s only a matter of time.

Wolf glares but it shifts quickly, heated in a whole new way. All of Genichiro’s darkest thoughts fade to leave something else in their wake.

“You watch me enough for the both of us,” he says, and Genichiro doesn’t even look for the words to argue.

It’s true. He is always watching.

Wolf always catches him staring.

He’s tired of denying it, even to himself.

Wolf throws his left arm out and lets his prosthetic tug him into the trees, flitting along the branches towards the rest of their men. Genichiro follows after him on the ground, flicking blood off his blade. He can’t see Wolf, exactly, but he can see the trees shifting under his weight.

It’s still Wolf. He watches all the same.

-

They’ll have a few days of peace. 

It will take that long before the Ministry regroups, if not longer. Genichiro gets cleaned up, meets with his generals, and sets everyone to task.

Then he finds Wolf in his quarters tending his weapons. His prosthetic is already cleaned even if it never really looks the part— Wolf always cares for it, first. Then Kusabimaru. Sabimaru, his shinobi axe, his shuriken. There is an order to the process, Wolf running down a mental list, everything meticulously maintained. He’s cleaning the barrel of his flame vent when Genichiro walks in, pausing just inside the doorway in nothing but his kimono, the top pulled off his shoulders to hang loose around his waist.

Wolf’s hand still in their work as he glances up, staring at Genichiro for a long moment before speaking.

“Something you need of me?” Wolf asks, and Genichiro grits his teeth. As though there is only one thing.

As though Genichiro doesn’t need all of him.

“You keep relying on your master’s blood to save you, even though you mean to give it up.”

Wolf sets his flame vent and the brush he’s using to clean it down in front of him, all his tools and gear spread out on a ragged piece of cloth. 

“I do as I’m commanded. Right now, that is fighting alongside you. Eventually it will mean cutting the ties of immortality, but until that day comes I will use the tools at my disposal.”

A dozen different blades. His heavy metal umbrella. Jars of gunpowder and glittering lapis lazuli and piles of too-sweet candy.

His master’s blood, flowing through his veins, making him a monster.

Making him throw his life away time and time again, just to save Genichiro’s.

“You’re reckless,” Genichiro spits, and Wolf cocks his head to the side. It’s startlingly canine. Genichiro wonders if the name came first, or if it followed after Wolf’s instincts.

“Ashina will be safe long before any ties to immortality are severed. You have nothing to lose.”

Wolf is right; Genichiro doesn’t have him. Has never had him.

Will never have him if he doesn’t step forward and take what he wants.

“You’re nothing, then? A tool at your master’s disposal to be thrown away when he is finished with you?”

Wolf furrows his brows, head tilting even further to the side.

“Is that not what you’re doing with me, Lord Genichiro?” 

The rest of it goes unspoken— that is what everyone does with Wolf.

That is all he has ever known.

“It’s not what I mean to do with you,” he hisses, hands clenched into fists at his sides. 

Wolf gets to his feet and closes the distance between them, eyes serious and expression unfathomable. 

“What is it you mean to do, then?”

_ Keep you,  _ Genichiro thinks frantically, but he can’t make a sound. 

It is easier, somehow, to lean down and kiss him. He takes Wolf’s head in both his hands, pressing deep between his lips; taking, taking. Wolf doesn’t flinch, doesn’t pull away. He’s been waiting for this for a long time— longer than Genichiro has been aware of what he wants from Wolf. 

Genichiro is the last to know himself. It doesn’t sting the way he expects.

Wolf knows him well enough for them both.

“Wait,” Wolf says after a while, trying to ease back out of Genichiro’s embrace. It’s not a rejection. “Not here. Let me—”

Genichiro picks Wolf up and throws him over his shoulder. Wolf doesn’t resist— huffs what might be a laugh and lets himself be carried out of the room. It would be an easy thing for Wolf to break free if wanted, but he does not; just lets his muscles go loose and allows Genichiro to spirit him away to his quarters.

They’re finer than Wolf’s own, more lavish. Genichiro’s station demands it, even if he himself does not. He sets Wolf down on his futon, kissing him again, hands fisted in his clothes. Genichiro eases Wolf’s haori off his shoulders, pulling at the knot of his obi with eager hands.

“Let me?”

Wolf nods as Genichiro works off his haori, tugs his shitagi down, helps Wolf out of his hakama. He’s finally gotten comfortable enough in the castle that he doesn’t wear his armor at night and Genichiro is grateful; it already takes too long to undress him. It would be faster if Genichiro would stop kissing him. Stop clutching at his skin, mouthing down his jaw, licking up bruises into the curve of his throat.

By the time Wolf is laid bare and spread out on the futon like an offering Genichiro’s hands are shaking. Wolf has been running his fingers over the scars on Genichiro’s arms. Tracing the ones on his back, touch dragging across all the places his lightning has lingered before he sets it loose. The contact makes him shudder. He bites back a whine.

It’s too much at once— touching Wolf. Being touched by Wolf. Genichiro thinks about the way he moves in a fight, never pausing, never settling. How he is always gone before Genichiro can stop him; up into the trees, onto the rooftops, just out of reach. 

Genichiro wants to keep him. He doesn’t mind letting Wolf learn every scar he bears; every patch of blackened skin, every old wound.

Now isn’t the time.

Now he wants to pin Wolf down and keep him there.

“Stay,” he mumbles into Wolf’s mouth, splaying a palm flat on his chest and pressing insistently before getting to his feet. Wolf smirks but obeys, watching as Genichiro opens a chest near the window and pulls out a coil of jute rope. It’s coarse, and strong, and clean.

Genichiro has been imagining Wolf bound in it for months, now.

He kneels back down with the rope in hand, eyes roaming over Wolf’s face as he searches for some kind of answer to a question he doesn’t want to ask. The amusement is gone from Wolf’s gaze, replaced with something heated.

“How do you want me?” Wolf asks, and Genichiro has to close his eyes for a moment and just breathe. 

The truth leaves Genichiro too naked, even just in his thoughts; he wants Wolf a thousand different ways. Wants him pulled apart and folded up and twisted around until he can’t be unwound.

Wants him in his arms when he wakes up in the morning. Wants to tuck his face into Wolf’s hair and breathe in until it hurts.

He settles for a half-truth instead.

“Up on your knees,” he says, moving closer and shaking the rope loose. “Turn around.”

Wolf goes easy. Settles into seiza, and puts his hands behind his back with perfect, terrifying trust. As though Genichiro didn’t take his arm.

As though Genichiro didn’t take his life.

His hands tremble again. If Wolf notices when he starts tying the ropes, he doesn’t say anything. He binds Wolf’s arms together, palms against the inner part of his forearms. Wolf’s shoulders bow under the strain, but Genichiro doesn’t stop. He wraps the rope around his biceps, around his chest, twisting it into intricate patterns. 

Wolf is a work of art when he is finished.

Wolf was a work of art when he began, but now he is bound in place, all for Genichiro. It took some time. Long enough that Wolf relaxed into the motions, limp in Genichiro’s knots. Now Wolf’s head lolls forward, hair in his eyes and a flush creeping high in his cheeks. Genichiro presses himself against Wolf’s back, arms wrapping around him to trace over the lines of rope. He tucks his face into Wolf’s neck, palms sliding reverently over the bonds. 

The words come more readily when Wolf isn’t looking at him. When he can’t run, or dodge, or hide.

“I want you,” Genichiro says, and Wolf lets out a rough breath, leaning back against him.

“You have me,” Wolf replies. Genichiro shakes his head.

“Not just now,” he murmurs into Wolf’s jaw, one hand splayed over his chest, the other easing down to cling to the ropes over his stomach. “I want you to be mine.”

Wolf lets his head fall back onto Genichiro’s shoulder, turning until he can meet his eyes.

“You have me,” he says again. It’s so earnest that Genichiro can’t find air to breathe. 

It’s what he wants. What he’s been too afraid to ask for but too desperate not to chase after.

What he needs, if he’s going to have any hope of saving himself.

Genichiro covers Wolf’s eyes with his palm, and shivers, and kisses him. The ropes are stretched taut under his fingers, and he slides them down to circle Wolf’s cock instead, stroking him slowly. Wolf jerks under his touch, mouth opening wider for Genichiro, a helpless sound spilling out. His fingers brush at Genichiro’s stomach, grasping weakly but unable to find purchase. 

Their lips are swollen and wet when Genichiro finally lays Wolf down on his back on the futon. He has to leave Wolf there long enough to grab a jar of oil from the shelf— it’s the kind that Wolf favors for his blades. Genichiro has taken to using it now. He doesn’t know if it’s truly any better than what he used before, or if it just feels that way.

Something else of Wolf that he is taking for his own.

It’s easier than he expects when he presses slick fingers into Wolf to open him up. Wolf is relaxed around him, breathing hard but taking him effortlessly. Genichiro’s brows furrow, and he breaks away from where he’s pressing messy kisses into Wolf’s throat to meet his eyes.

“Do you do this to yourself?” Genichiro asks. Wolf nods, thighs easing wider and eyes lit with want. The thought of Wolf alone in his room with his legs parted, hands moving desperately in his clothes, is almost too much to bear. Genichiro shoves deeper into Wolf. Watches him quake. “Do you think of me?” he asks.

Wolf hesitates, then nods again.

It is all Genichiro can do not to finish then and there, still in his kimono, Wolf twitching around his fingers. 

He shifts up higher between Wolf’s thighs and slides into him in one long, careful thrust. Wolf breathes harshly through his nose, thighs quivering as Genichiro grinds forward, stopping only when there is nothing left for Wolf to take. He takes Wolf face in both his hands and presses their foreheads together, eyes closed, thumbs brushing over his cheekbones. He still smells like cherry blossoms.

He still tastes like candy.

“Stay with me,” Genichiro says, rocking his hips into Wolf, making both of them whine.

“I will stay. Until I cannot,” Wolf replies. 

It’s not the answer he wants, but it’s more than he deserves. He fucks Wolf with his face shoved into his throat, with his hands in his hair, with their mouths pressed together. Trembling, whining, both of them needy.

After a while he unties the ropes— if Wolf wanted to go he would be gone already, with or without the pretense of something keeping him there. When they come together again, Wolf straddles him, imprints from Genichiro’s rope etched into his skin, shameless as he moves atop him. 

They fall asleep filthy and tangled in one another. Genichiro can’t remember the last time he slept without dreaming.

They wake up the next morning to the sound of bells, the Ministry’s troops trying to push past the castles defenses again. Wolf is armed and armored in the blink of an eye. He takes to the rooftops, agile as always. The smell of flowers lingers in the air.

Genichiro watches.

He can’t seem to stop.

**Author's Note:**

> Tell me nice things, here or on [twitter.](https://twitter.com/scifictioness?lang=en)


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